Confessions of an Arrogant Amateur

She was resistant to criticism. Disdainful to those who dared to critique her. Hostile, even.

(Although, she tried to hide it, gritting her teeth, smiling, nodding.)

She was amazed and outraged at every rejection. Why couldn't these people see the brilliance of her work? The humor? The heartbreak? The perfectly constructed, gem-like sentences?

(In her defense she was armed with degrees and experience. She had majored in English, taught writing, had written and published several short stories. Less talented writers than she had snagged publishing deals. She'd read their silly books. If they could catch the attention of an editor, why couldn't she?)

Still, she had to admit that she might be overlooking something important. Perhaps there was some secret to publishing that she had yet to discover. Perhaps, there was an essential element missing from her work...

She said she wanted someone to tell her what to DO with her manuscript. Just tell me what to do, she would lament, and I'll do it! 

(She was lying.)

What she wanted was for someone to tell her that her story was perfect exactly the way it was. When someone pointed out a problem, mentioned an area of confusion, offered--gasp!-- a suggestion, she'd think: Well, obviously they have no idea what I am trying to do here. They haven't read it carefully. This is a complicated, difficult book. They don't understand it! Blah blah blah etc.

But years of writing and submitting and being rejected had started to wear her down. One day, close to giving up, she saw a brochure for a week-long writing conference. She toyed with the idea of signing up, but wavered. Her hesitance was centered around the price tag, two thousand dollars! and for what? Workshops on Setting? Characterization? Plot? She knew all of this already! She spoke to one of the conference organizers on the phone.

I'm not sure if this is worth it, she said. I'm not a beginner. I'm on the verge. 

But even as she was speaking, confidently (arrogantly), a small scared voice in her head whispered:

If you know all of this, why aren't you published? 

She signed up for the conference. This is IT, she decided. A final effort at pursuing a dream. One last outlay of cash, of time. If she didn't get her big break, well, she'd given it her best shot.

She sent the first ten pages of her latest manuscript to be critiqued. The assigned mentor would read it and be blown away by the story. What is there to discuss? the mentor would likely say. This is perfect exactly the way it is. 

They met the first day of the conference. Not surprisingly, the mentor complimented our arrogant amateur on her writing. But then she asked several questions:

Why does your story start with this particular scene?
What does your main character want?
Where are the hints of conflict?
What is the driving question?
What--
Why--
How--
Have you tried--
Do you think--
Could you--

Our arrogant amateur could answer none of these questions. She stumbled back to her room and burst into tears.

Reality was a wave crashing over her carefully constructed wall of delusions, and she had to admit, finally, that she had no idea what she was doing.

But she wanted to learn.

Portrait of a No-Longer-Arrogant Amateur
with her mentor

In Which I Gush about My Retreat, Confess My Biggest Flaw, and Reveal My New Life Goal

And now a break from my regularly scheduled How to Get Published program to gush about my amazing retreat...

Of course, there was the usual recharging of the writing battery, the reminder of why I love writing books and being around others who have the same obsession and love. Where else can you discuss the elements of the Hero's Journey while noshing on gourmet appetizers or gripe about rejections while taking an invigorating walk in the woods? 

I go into every retreat expecting the restfulness and the opportunity to get a lot of work done without the constant interruptions and distractions of daily life.

What I always forget--even though it has happened to me EVERY SINGLE TIME I attend one of these retreats--is how much left I have to learn.

My biggest flaw as a writer (and probably as a person) is my reluctance to hear criticism. I am getting better at this! But there is always that icky feeling when someone tells me what's not working in a manuscript.

I had brought a novel with me for the plane trip--one of the huge tomes from my teetering TBR stack--Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham. This book is over 700 pages but I had the absurd idea that I could read it before I arrived at my retreat. Instead, I barely put a dent in it, and ended up reading bits of it each night and then on the trip home.

Not to get into the whole saga (it's a very good book, if somewhat in need of editing) but one passage jumped out at me, for obvious reasons:

The main character, Phillip, has decided to be a painter. He asks a friend to look at his pictures and the friend says no. Phillip is outraged and asks why. The friend answers simply: "People ask you for criticism, but they only want praise."

This made me laugh because it gets at the heart of my problem. When I ask someone to read my writing what I really want is for them to say that it is perfect just the way it is.

What I learned (again) on this retreat is that my writing is not perfect. (I know, ha ha, right?) but I can handle hearing about the weaknesses and flaws without crumpling or getting defensive. And more than that, I can get EXCITED about figuring out the solution.

It helped that all of the writers there were amazingly supportive and encouraging. 

And I can't say enough about the teacher at the retreat, Kim Griswell. I actually met Kim at an earlier retreat where she was randomly assigned as my mentor.

The first time she gave me a bit of criticism--and she was so NICE about it--I struggled not to cry or make a grouchy face. I'm sure I came off acting like a jerk. Later, after I had time to stew and consider, I knew she was right, and I apologized.

That was the retreat where I heard Newbery Winner Linda Su Park give a speech about how to accept criticism. You look at the person with a blank face and say one word: "Okay." (I wish I had heard that speech BEFORE I had my meeting with Kim.)

At this last retreat, I remembered the "Okay" part and braced myself for whatever Kim was going to lay on me (but inside, I confess that I was hoping she'd just gush about how perfect my writing was.) See, I really do have to learn this over and over.

I'm happy to say that there were no tears or grumpy faces. Okay, I did argue with her. A little. But only because I was trying to understand what exactly had confused her. She was a good sport about it, God love her. And I spent the rest of the week picking Kim's brilliant brain whenever I had the chance.

Here is another thing I have to learn over and over: often that bit of criticism is the key to everything--it's the Way In that was shimmering just out of my reach. Instead of making me weary, it resonates, because it is right. I almost cried during this retreat--not out of frustration, but out of relief. This project that I have been working on for YEARS may actually be one step closer to completion.

Toward the end of the week I got a string of emails from my publishing company. The first official review of Thin Space has come in, and it is a starred review from Kirkus. Not many people outside of the writing world know what this means.

But I can tell you, the writers at the retreat knew.

Kim read the review out loud and there I was, almost crying again.

The retreat was over all too soon and I was doing what I always do as I packed my suitcase, plotting how I could come back. 

Since I truly believe that you have to ask the Universe for what you want if you ever expect to get it, here is my new life goal:

Return, next year, as a teacher. 

Interview with Tracy Barrett

As promised I have picked the creative brain of another writer friend. Tracy Barrett is the author of nineteen books for children and an inspiring teacher and mentor to countless beginners and not-so-beginner-writers. Disclosure: I consider her my mentor. Several years ago we met at a Nashville SCBWI (Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators) conference, and later, I wrote a grant for her to be a visiting author at a school where I taught. She did an awesome job working with the students and collected quite a few fans that day. I’ve read three books by Tracy—the creepy ghost story Cold in Summer, On Etruscan Time, a cool YA time-travel/historical fiction novel, and recently, her critically-acclaimed, newest novel, a twist on the minotaur myth, Dark of the Moon. 

Jody: So Tracy, I have to ask you, even though I am sure that this is a question you have been asked a million times: where do you get your ideas?

Tracy: Hi, Jody, and thanks for having me on your blog!  Almost always, my ideas come from questions I have. The best way to answer a question is to write about it. So, I asked myself:

1. What would happen if Sherlock Holmes had access to a crime lab? (The Sherlock Files series—and I thought of this before the wonderful BBC series with a similar premise came out!)

2. While Odysseus was trying (not very hard) to get home after the Trojan War, what was his son Telemachus up to? (King of Ithaka)

3. I had lots of questions about the minotaur—it's a very wacky myth! Why is the minotaur the only half-human, half-critter monster in Greek mythology whose lower half is the animal? Whenever there's only one of something, you have to wonder why. Why on earth was a labyrinth sufficient to keep a man-eating monster confined—okay, he's not too bright, but he might stumble out, right? Why not put a door on it? If Theseus needed help getting out of the labyrinth, why didn't he need help getting in? Why did he take Ariadne (the minotaur's sister) away after he killed her brother but then dump her on an island with no explanation? Why did he sail a black sail on his homeward journey, knowing that his father would think this meant he had died in the labyrinth? (Dark of the Moon)

Jody: I love the idea of questions sparking a story. Which makes me wonder what the next step is in your process. Do you do any planning/outlining before you begin writing?

Tracy: For the Sherlock Files, I did a meticulous outline. I had never written a detective novel before, and I wanted my editor to help me make the clues sufficient to solve the mystery but not too obvious, and the red herrings distracting enough without being too distracting. But otherwise, I just have an idea where I'm starting and an idea where I'm ending. The journey takes many unexpected turns along the way.

Jody: That’s what I’ve found too. I’m guessing that Dark of the Moon was one of your more organically-developed books, although I bet you had to outline at some point. When I read it I was so impressed with how you wove the myth of the minotaur and the characters Ariadne and Theseus into something original and compelling. I brushed up on the myth before I began reading because I wanted to see what you started with. Your story grounds the Greek myth in reality, so readers get a vivid sense of the time and place. Many of your books, I’ve noticed, feature a historical or mythological figure. How do you fit research into your writing process?

Tracy: Research is cyclical. I start looking for answers to whatever question prompted me to write the book, and then start writing. More questions come up as I write, so I research them, and then the research often takes the story in a different direction, which leads to more questions--> more research --> new direction --> more questions --> more research --> new direction, etc.

Jody: Sounds like the research aspect could be very absorbing and time-consuming, and yet you've managed to write nineteen books. Have you written books that haven’t been published?

Tracy: Oh heavens, yes. And thank goodness. I think of those manuscripts as my "scales"—a music student's scales aren't to be listened to, but the student must play a lot of them in order to learn how to play something that someone else would want to listen to. I didn't realize that those projects were practice for a book that someone else would like to read, but they were. Plus I plunder them for scenes and descriptions all the time, so it's not wasted work.

Jody: Hmm, the scales metaphor makes me feel better about my own never-to-be-published manuscripts still stuffed in a drawer. Those were my practice.... Now I have to ask you: have you gotten any rejections along the way?

Tracy: I started off writing nonfiction, which is a different process. My first novel was accepted by the first editor I sent it to, so I got all puffed up and thought I was hot stuff. Of course there was a comeuppance: my second novel received 23 rejections before it was accepted. And one more after, from an editor I forgot to tell about the acceptance! The book (Cold in Summer) got good reviews and some nice awards, so I don't think it was really the book's fault. I just hadn't found the right editor. I've now published eight books with her.

Jody: Thanks, Tracy, you’re giving me hope here. I follow your blog so I know that this is your last semester working as a professor of Italian at Vanderbilt University and soon you'll be writing full time. At this point how do you balance your writing projects with your other obligations? And how do you think that will change after you quit your day job?

Tracy: I've had to work hard at balance, and if it were a matter of writing and teaching, I think I could still do it. The way I balanced it was by not throwing myself fully into academe—I've never gone for tenure, so my summers have been my own—and by streamlining my writing process. But since authors are required to do more and more of their own promotion, and since much of that promotion happens during the school year, I have to say farewell to my day job.

I would say that I'm very organized, only I don't think that organization is a thing you are; it's a thing you do. It was a conscious choice on my part to organize my life carefully. If I wanted to do all the things I wanted to do, I couldn't afford the luxury of sloppiness. So I worked against my natural tendency to let things slide, to create piles, to allow paperwork to back up, to leave things where they dropped, and organized my life to the point where I had the time to do the writing and the teaching—and the wifing and the mothering and the friending and all those other things!

Jody: Okay. Must remember this: Get organized! You mentioned that authors have to do more of their own promotion these days. What kinds of promotional things do you do to find new readers of your books?

Tracy: As a writer of historical fiction, it's very important for me to reach teachers and librarians, since they're often the ones who will guide readers to books like mine. I try to go to events where those people will be present and tell them about my work, as well as to school visits where I meet my actual constituents! I love doing school and library visits and am really looking forward to having the time and the flexibility to do more of them.

Jody: Well, as I said, you did a great job with my students. In fact, I’m thinking you’re my mentor for successful author visits too. It was great talking to you, Tracy.

Tracy: You too! Thanks, Jody.

Searching for a Mentor

Here's something I wish I knew fifteen years ago: how helpful it would be to have a mentor--a kindly, wizened writer to take me under her wing and guide my career. Okay. I never found that person, exactly. But in some ways, over the years, I have. My first few years, unfortunately, were spent floundering alone. I was the perfect mix of arrogance and ignorance. I thought I knew everything about writing (I had majored in it, after all! I had won awards! What could someone teach ME?)

A lot, as it turned out.

My first glimpse of a mentor came in the form of meeting other writers at conferences. No, none of these people ever took me on as a project, but just seeing real people, real women like me, living a writer's life, was important. They showed me that being a writer wasn't some unattainable, magical, crazy dream. These women were like me--they had husbands and children and went grocery shopping and ran errands. They weren't strange characters living in turrets ala Emily Dickinson.

I asked these writers how they worked--nuts and bolts about inspiration and revision and craft. They had different methods but I found that there were things that I could apply to myself and my own work.

Which led me to reading about writers. There are tons of books out there on writing, some more helpful than others. My favorites are: Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott, (hilarious and God, I wish I had read this book 15 years ago); On Writing by Stephen King (even if you don't like his books, you will find helpful advice on the craft of writing); anything by Natalie Goldberg (very New-Agey but so inspirational); and The Artist's Way by Cameron (also New-Agey, but this book literally changed my life with its ideas about creativity and inspiration).

So I never found my in-the-flesh guru. But over the years I have learned so much from a community of other writers--those I know personally and those I know only through their books. And now I am extremely grateful to have found a writing partner--a woman who is roughly at the same stage I am who reads my drafts and give me much-needed advice. I met her in line at a Port-a-potty at a writers' conference. Which just goes to show--I don't know what. Be open to meeting writers. Be receptive to learning new things.

Writing is such a solitary activity. Never close yourself off from reaching out. You might find a mentor. Or maybe you'll just make a new friend.